vs
1:2
overall capability wins (1 ties across 4 scored). Sonar Reasoning leads overall.
- Reasoning0:2
- Pricing0:3
- Speed1:1
- Specs1:0
Verdict
Sonar Reasoning edges reasoning & knowledge; Sonar Pro offers ~1.6x larger context (200K vs 127K); Sonar Reasoning is ~3.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Pro.
- Sonar Reasoning edges reasoning & knowledge
- Sonar Pro offers ~1.6x larger context (200K vs 127K)
- Sonar Reasoning is ~3.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Sonar Pro
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Sonar Pro
- $6.75
- Sonar Reasoning
- $2.25
Sonar Reasoning is about 3.0x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Perplexity
Perplexity
Family
Sonar
Sonar
License
Proprietary
Proprietary
Open weights
No
No
Release
Feb 19, 2025
Jan 27, 2025
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
Perplexity
Perplexity
Modalities
text, image → text
text → text
Specs
Context window
200K
127K
Max output
8K
8K
Parameters
—
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$3
$1
Output $/1M
$15
$5
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$6
$2
Speed
tok/s
81
60
TTFT (s)
2.1
1.5
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
75.5
—
GPQA Diamond
57.8
62.3
Humanity's Last Exam
6.6
—
AIME 2025
—
—
MATH-500
74.5
92.1
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)
—
—
AA-Omniscience Accuracy
—
—
AA-LCR v1.1
—
—
CritPt
—
—
MMMU-Pro
—
—
IFBench
—
—
Chartography
—
—
Chartography (With Tools)
—
—
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
—
—
SWE-bench Pro
—
—
SWE-bench Multilingual
—
—
LiveCodeBench
27.5
—
Terminal-Bench 2.1
—
—
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
22.6
—
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
—
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
—
—
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
—
—
| Metric | Sonar Pro | Sonar Reasoning | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Family | Sonar | Sonar | — |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary | — |
| Open weights | No | No | — |
| Release | Feb 19, 2025 | Jan 27, 2025 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | Perplexity | Perplexity | — |
| Modalities | text, image → text | text → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 200K | 127K | A +73K |
| Max output | 8K | 8K | tie |
| Parameters | — | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $3 | $1 | B +$2 |
| Output $/1M | $15 | $5 | B +$10 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $6 | $2 | B +$4 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | 81 | 60 | A +21 |
| TTFT (s) | 2.1 | 1.5 | B +0.60 |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | 75.5 | — | — |
| GPQA Diamond | 57.8 | 62.3 | B +4.5 pts |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 6.6 | — | — |
| AIME 2025 | — | — | — |
| MATH-500 | 74.5 | 92.1 | B +17.6 pts |
| Humanity's Last Exam (with tools) | — | — | — |
| AA-Omniscience Accuracy | — | — | — |
| AA-LCR v1.1 | — | — | — |
| CritPt | — | — | — |
| MMMU-Pro | — | — | — |
| IFBench | — | — | — |
| Chartography | — | — | — |
| Chartography (With Tools) | — | — | — |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Pro | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | — | — |
| LiveCodeBench | 27.5 | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | — | — | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | 22.6 | — | — |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | — | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | — | — | — |
Sonar Pro
- Context
- 200K / 8K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $3 / $15
- Speed
- 81 tok/s · 2.1s TTFT
- Modalities
- text, image → text
- License
- Proprietary
Deeper Perplexity search model with ~2× citations versus base Sonar — suited to multi-step research agents (plus search surcharges).
Sonar Reasoning
- Context
- 127K / 8K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $1 / $5
- Speed
- 60 tok/s · 1.5s TTFT
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Perplexity's grounded reasoning API with live web search — mid-tier before Sonar Reasoning Pro.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.